My intellectual nature is the field of all legitimate gospel operations with reference to the production of a Christian life and character. As a divine affection, charity or love springs out of union with God, or being made a “partaker of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lusts.” Such being the height of its bed-rock, it is said, “Every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.” And it is also said, “He that saith I know him and keepeth not his commandments is a liar.” This strong language correlates with the fact that charity expresses the idea of love as an attribute of divine life, known as the life of God. It is an attribute belonging to those who have made the high attainment of a spiritual or mental condition which places them beyond the need of penal laws to restrain them from crime. Its measure is the love of God. Its full import may be expressed in these words, loving as God loves.
After enumerating many of the Christian graces an apostle said, Above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. So charity, or rather its possessor, is [pg 217] no willful truth “butcherer,” for charity believeth all things (or all truth); hopeth all things (promised); rejoiceth, not in iniquity, but in the truth. It has no “stock” in known error, for it “abounds in all knowledge and judgment,” and “approves things that are excellent.” It is noble and right to let “love,” or “charity have her perfect work,” to be, or rather try to be, as charitable as God himself; but it is absurd and preposterous to go beyond or try to be more charitable. “It is enough that the disciple be as his master.”
Men are guilty of this presumption when they, in feigned charity, go beyond the word of the Lord, or beyond the truth in their expressions of kindness.
There is a great deal of love in this world that lacks the elements of perfectness. It is not the “love of God,” or loving as God loves. It is not the attribute of a divine life. There is no charity in influencing a person, willfully, to stop short or go beyond the truth in Christian faith or obedience. There is no charity in giving a man money knowingly to purchase whisky to get drunk upon. Charity never conflicts with truth or right. On the contrary, it endeavors to bring all men to the standard of truth and rectitude.
The phrase “Broad-gauge” seems to have been gotten up to express the idea of an intelligent relaxation from “human creeds” as bonds of union and fellowship. In this sense we all ought to be the advocates of “Broad-gauge religion.” We should cultivate the spirit of gospel liberality until we utterly disregard and put away all human creeds.
It is a trite saying, that one extreme begets another; against this error we should guard with great caution. To succeed in religion, we must remember, always, that we have in the word of God a standard of truth and right that will always govern us according to heaven's will. Many persons, forgetting this truth, have been led to conclude that departures from the word of truth, as a matter of “liberality,” or “broad-gauge religion,” are justifiable. And, as “liberalists,” or “broad-gauge Christians,” they are disposed to recognize all the existing divisions in faith and practice that are known in [pg 218] Christendom. They even go further and allow that somehow all are right, and will stand upon an equality in the righteous judgement of God. This is not perfect love. Charity, over and above a kindly feeling towards those who are in error, is unfaithfulness to the truth, to God, and to the very best interests of our humanity. It is, in all such cases, love run mad! A man should never get so broad in his religion as to be unfaithful to truth.
The phraseology has also been appropriated by skeptics and semi-infidels to popularize their own semi-infidel philosophy, which they love to denominate “free thought.” Deists, Pantheists and Atheists have seized upon the phrase and appropriated it to their ungodly speculations. It is true that others, in getting away from their old creeds, have run past the standard of truth and right. All this wildness in the standardless field of thought, where Hobbes and other infidels reveled, without any guide save the civil law, has been denominated “Broad-gauge religion,” and “Liberalism.”
We should always remember that going beyond the truth and the eternal laws of right is libertinism or lawlessness.
“Charity,” extending, or reaching out thus, is no longer “charity,” or “perfect love.” Such expressions of love are misdirected, and, if knowingly done, are blameworthy. Charity is governed by the perfect law of truth; when it is not destitute of its own divine nature it conducts us in the “straight and narrow way.”
“Long as of life the joyous hours remain,